> We’ve extended the increased hourly pay outlined below through May 16. We are also extending double overtime pay in the U.S. and Canada. These extensions increase our total investment in pay during COVID-19 to nearly $700 million for our hourly employees and partners. In addition, we are providing flexibility with leave of absence options, including expanding the policy to cover COVID-19 circumstances, such as high-risk individuals or school closures. We continue to see heavy demand during this difficult time and the team is doing incredible work for our customers and the community.
None of this really disagrees with the article; it's an issue because people typically on a leave of absence don't get paid (notice the lack of "paid leave").
No, but saying look at all they're doing without addressing kind of the key part of the article does kind of miss the point, and makes your response seem more like a response from PR then a comment on the text.
The key part, from an Amazon warehouse worker perspective, is that they're not extending the unlimited unpaid time off option. Huge loss in scheduling flexibility.
“If any team members are unable or unwilling to work a scheduled shift, they can use unlimited unpaid time off through the month of April without penalty, and we are supportive if someone chooses to stay home.”
They use a lot of contracting for their warehouses and in some places they completely turn over the entire warehouse on average every year. [0] So they're used to constantly hiring people. They also surge up and down massively already each Christmas, in 2019 they hired 200k workers seasonally for Christmas! [1] They might not have expected to do it now but they have the infrastructure to very quickly hire lots of people.
As of 2019, Amazon employed 798,000 employees, so we're looking at almost 1 million people, earning $15/hour at a minimum, with 401(k), health, vision, and dental benefits. Absolutely nuts.
I'd be really surprised if these were real- '401(k), health, vision, and dental benefits'. Anyone can offer 401k without matching, medical without contributing to the premium.
No, "low skill" means that a worker who has never done the job before can be quickly brought up to speed on how to do it, and that there won't be much of a productivity gradient between a new worker and one who has maxed out.
Many such jobs are incredibly hard work, and many are far more essential to the function of our society than anything I do for a living.
I get that calling this "low skill" comes across as derogatory, I'm just not sure what to do about that. Invent a euphemism?
Euphemisms have a limited lifespan until they too become derogatory. The words "idiot", "moron", and "imbecile" were once medical terms to describe certain conditions. In the 1960's [0] they were seen to have developed a negative stigma, and the word "retarded" began to be used instead.
Of course readers will know that now "retarded" has the stigma, and phrases like "developmental disability" are used. But for a period of time, you might have heard someone saying, "don't call my child an idiot, they're just mentally retarded." It seems strange, but at the time it was a kinder thing to say.
The problem is that the words aren't really the issue: change the words all you want, they will tend to develop the same stigma. The problem is that lots of people think less of those facing developmental challenges, and when they want to be mean to an otherwise "normal" person, they will compare them to the challenged.
I don't think that's going to change any time soon. But until it does, I suppose coming up with a new euphemism every generation or so isn't too bad of a thing to help reduce some of the stigma, at least for a period of time.
Most low skill jobs are not that shitty though. I mean, the pay might not be great but most of the actual work isn't that bad. There are exceptions of course and I've heard amazon warehouse jobs are awful. But, I worked a bunch of low skill jobs in high school and college and I actually enjoyed it most of the time. The teamwork and comradery are way better than any highly skilled jobs I've had.
Fast food comes immediately to mind: I once got disciplinary action one summer, because I came in to work too much, and crossed over 80 hours in a two-week pay period, thus earning overtime.
Coworkers had called out, so I got called in. Did my job, then got punished and unscheduled because I worked "too much".
All so a mega-franchiser (who owns most of one particular national chain's stores across a large region) could ultimately avoid supporting (no one was scheduled more than 39.5 hours a week to avoid them becoming "full-time" and requiring benefits, scheduling wasn't handled in a timely manner, etc.) the people who do the essential work for their survival, day in and day out, keeping massive profits for themselves.
It really pisses me off, and these are just a few of the reasons it's shitty.
Your situation was shitty, in that you were left with no options but low-pay work, but the fact that the mega-franchiser stepped in to take advantage of that situation, by hiring you, didn't make your situation any more shitty.
Offering conditions that are abysmal by some arbitrary standard is not exploitation in any meaningful sense. And the job didn't lower the bar. He only took the job because it was better than the next best job available to him. The franchiser benefited from the arrangement, but so did the employee.
Unequal power between two parties to a contract, where the more powerful party benefits, doesn't imply a zero-sum exploitive interaction. You're misattributing his shitty situation to the employer, when it in fact existed independently of the employment contract.
His shitty situation was that he didn't have a valuable skill to offer. He had one that was worth little, and the franchiser paid him for his skills accordingly.
They are keeping their wages low by avoiding mandatory pay rises that come with statutory overtime.
So to reiterate: they offer low wages, and their actions are consistent with that objective.
Yet the workers all chose to work there, implying it was better than the next best option available to them. For the employees, they are better off for that employer offering the employment, than not doing so.
So my point stands. You seem to not have even addressed it, and instead made an appeal to emotion by repeatedly referencing the low pay the employer insisted on providing.
>>How about not establishing regular schedules published in a timely manner?
This is the only potentially abusive and fraudulent practice you cited, and I would support class-action litigation to punish employers who engage in it, and publicly funded advocates and watchdogs to assist low-wage workers who find themselves facing these kinds of practices.
The argument that low-pay jobs - that those working them willingly accepted - is by definition exploitation is, OTOH, an economic fallacy that misattributes the cause of low-pay and promotes regulatory restrictions on contract liberty that gravely harm society.
> Yet the workers all chose to work there, implying it was better than the next best option available to them.
That's not how minimum-wage labor effectively works. The workers (many of whom have just entered the workforce, myself included at the time) apply for all the available jobs in their area and hope that at least one hires them.
At that level, the employers are in a race to the bottom, and rather than attempting to be a better choice to attract and support their labor force, their reliance on the workers' desperation means they all push the limits to see how much they can get out of workers for how little in return. It's the entire reason we even have minimum wage laws.
And they all do it. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about any given employer. I saw the same behavior, through my siblings' experience, at four different mega-franchisers.
> For the employees, they are better off for that employer offering the employment, than not doing so.
So, no. The employees aren't any better off being exploited by any given employer, when their only other choice is unemployment or identical exploitation by another employer.
>>The workers (many of whom have just entered the workforce, myself included at the time) apply for all the available jobs in their area and hope that at least one hires them
The workers could work for themselves, hawking products on the sidewalk, or going door-to-door offering to do odd jobs.
The jobs being offered provide a better path forward for them, which is why they apply for them rather than being self-employed.
>>their reliance on the workers' desperation means they all push the limits to see how much they can get out of workers for how little in return.
All employers try to maximize how much they get for what they pay. The wage level makes no difference to the employers' basic objective.
But what the employer offers has to be worth more to the worker than what the worker gives up, or the worker won't work for them. There is no exception to this fact in any mutually agreed employment contract.
>>There's nothing particularly noteworthy about any given employer.
You said they're in a race to the bottom, so there must be differences between them.
The ideal thing is for them to be automated, which makes things cost less. Then people have the money they didn't spend on paying unskilled workers to spend on something else, which creates demand for something else. The suppliers of the something else need workers to make it, so they hire the people who lost their jobs.
In many cases the new jobs require more skills, so the employers either have to train them or pay them enough to pay off student loans, so that's what they do. This is what has been happening for decades. The percentage of unskilled workers in the economy has been decreasing without a corresponding increase in unemployment.
What it more confusing to me is whether those jobs are supported by automation, and whether Amazon was able to scale up their internal robot production.
IIRC only a few of the warehouses are the highly automated ones where shelves are brought to pickers, most are still people walking isles with carts, biorobots (to borrow a Chernobol term) of a sort but with less radiation (more bear mace though).
This seems reasonable and beyond what other major employers are offering, but as is the fashion I'm sure Amazon will be convicted in the court of public interwebs shortly...
Amazon is doing pretty well due to the quarantine (as they deserve to given the services they provide). Them having to reduce their share of the profits from these extraordinary times is not particularly noble, but rather just average.
The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs.
Here in SF, multiple employees at 3 Whole Foods locations have already contracted Covid. Amazon has not done nearly enough thus far. The fact that they are now providing masks and cleaning up door handles is again, a bare minimum.
They should let exigent time off policies rein for at least 2 more months, before going back to business as normal policies.
Please realize, that even despite all of the above, their profits will keep rising through this period; there is no reason to think of them as victims, when they very much so are winners in this situation. Foregoing just a little bit of your extra profits to ensure your workers stay healthy in unprecedented times of a pandemic is not asking for too much.
>The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs.
Considering multiple states are larger than many European countries, I don't think it's appropriate to treat the US as a monolithic entity with respect to virus containment. Even if all of the states reacted identically, time and space dictate that different regions will be in different stages at any given time.
> Total death counts in the US are still going up.
It depends on the state, though. New deaths are decreasing in many States, including Washington, Texas, and California [1]. Looking at the US, as a whole, isn't really useful here.
This is ridiculous. I don't understand the defensiveness.
The United States is a nation. It has a federal government and federal bodies which are responsible for preventing spread of disease.
People can travel freely within these bounds without passports or visas or checkpoints.
Of course states have their own rules, and this is good, and yes, some states are doing better than others, but why the fear of revealing the incompetence of one nation?
This is how nation-states work in 2020 on planet Earth.
The European Union also has a federal government and federal bodies which pass policies. It has a directly elected lower house that represents the People with proportional representation[1], and an upper house that represents the Member States with equal representation[2], and an executive branch with a Chief Executive that signs bills into law[3].
People can travel freely within Member States without passports, visas, or checkpoints.
Of course, Member States have their own rules, and this is good, and yes, some Member States are doing better than others, but why the fear of revealing the incompetence of one Union?
This is how Unions work in 2020 on planet Earth.
I think we both agree that looking at the EU as a whole is totally meaningless in the context of the current discussion about Amazon workers. We are simply arguing the same about the United States. This isn’t some pro-US propaganda, the only agenda here is an insistence on ensuring that we are comparing apples to apples.
P.S. Speaking of "Nation-States", hilariously enough, Gavin Newsom recently referred to California as a "Nation State"[4].
I'm still flabbergasted at the need to compare to the EU or European states.
No where in my original comments did I bring them up, or was thinking of them. Your snide metaphor also doesn't work since the EU does not override the nation-state model. The EU parliament only exerts some powers over EU nations. The Health department of Germany cannot made decisions on behalf of the health department of France. I understand you're going to compare this to two American states, but honestly, it doesn't work.
> This isn’t some pro-US propaganda, the only agenda here is an insistence on ensuring that we are comparing apples to apples.
Again, when did I compare anything to Europe? You brought up the comparison for no reason I can comprehend. Hence my questions about the defensiveness.
I don't think we're going to agree, so happy to leave this here.
I'm the one who brought up the EU. The purpose was as a size comparison. Look at the differences
in covid "stage" between different EU states - that difference is primarily a function of geography - the time it takes for the virus to spread is about the same as the time it takes to isolate and suppress it.
Now consider that the US is substantially larger and more sparsely populated. That alone ensures that it doesn't make any more sense to say "US is at stage 1" than it does to say "EU is at stage one", because that fails to capture the range of different stages in different geographic regions (countries/states). That doesn't even begin to capture policy differences.
That was the sole reason I brought it up. Nothing defensive anywhere.
Just like it makes no sense to say the UK is at stage one because London is ahead. You need to stop being so pedantic. I get you guys want to compare but you're beating a dead horse.
The difference is that the UK is a unitary State[1], and as such its COVID strategy is dictated at the UK-level. The sub-national units are not sovereign.
The US and the EU are federations[2][3], and their sub-national units are sovereign. Like the EU, the US’s COVID strategy has been left to the States[4].
The post I was replying to clearly said that the issue was size not governance. But even with regards to that point I really don't understand how it affects what I said.
My point was that you can't say even a country is in a certain stage because the outbreaks are much more local than that. London is a month ahead of some parts of the country. So its just as incorrect to say the UK is at a certain stage as it is to say it about the EU and USA.
> The EU Parliament only exerts some powers over EU nations
The same holds true for the Federal government of the US. The 10th Amendment ensures this. Similar to the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, EU law overrides Member State law (E.g. GDPR).
> The Health Department of Germany cannot made decisions on behalf of the health department of France
Yes, the same way the Minnesota Department of Health cannot make decisions on behalf of the New York State Department of Health.
> I understand you’re going to compare this to two American states, but honestly, it doesn’t work
Saying “it doesn’t work” again and again doesn’t magically make it true, you need to provide actual concrete counterpoints.
The US is a Union of States. The Federal government does not have the authority to issue lockdowns or stay-at-home orders. The vast majority of US testing is being funded and administered by States, not the Federal government. In practice, this is indistinguishable from the EU.
The US contains 330 million people, and consists of 50 different states, each with their own Constitutions, legislatures, and their own responses to COVID.
The EU contains 500 million people, and consists of 27 different states, each with their own Constitutions and legislatures.
We can do this all day, but it’s pretty clear that your argument doesn’t have any legs.
> We can do this all day, but it’s pretty clear that your argument doesn’t have any legs.
It certainly doesn't once you begin to ignore facts. Coming up with literal parallels is not a good argument. No wonder you can keep it going all day.
In either case, I'm going to stop because I still don't know why we're comparing the US and the EU. I didn't start the comparison, and it has no bearing on the subject.
> It has a federal government and federal bodies which are responsible for preventing spread of disease.
The response is handled at the state level, not the federal level. The federal level can provide advice and help coordinate actions between states / provide backup resources, but isn't meant to take direct action.
This isn't about defensiveness. You state that, collectively, the US is still in stage one, and then go on to say that this is evidence for a poor response and that it's early to recommend returns to work.
This is invalid, because for example a couple of states could be bring the total number up. Further, again because of the scale of the US, policy appropriate for one state may not be appropriate for others.
Again, the issue here is treating the gigantic US, a mishmash of cultures in 50 states with semiautonomous governments, as a monolithic entity. If you evaluate response policy in this way you're not going to get a good signal.
What do you expect one state is supposed to do if another is bringing the numbers up due to their autonomous choices? It's just not useful to consider the US as a single entity in matters where states maintain control over most relevant measures. No one is denying the numbers, but it seems rather strange to lump (with respect to the matter) largely independent entities together. If you're trying to make a point, then make that point directly where it applies.
> The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs.
That isn't true according to the numbers from https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en. Do you have a citation for that? Numbers for new deaths have been hovering between 0 and 5 for the last month in SF, SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lockdown measures it basically never hit SF.
Deaths is not a metric that can determine which stage of this pandemic we are in. Immunity is the figure you're looking for, which will not increase under a shelter-in-place order. Deaths are down, but will immediately shoot back up if the shelter-in-place is lifted.
The only goal posts you should care about are herd immunity or vaccination. Nothing else matters when discussing how much longer this pandemic will last.
edit: Wow you guys are really mad at me judging by all these downvotes. You're right, the pandemic is over, lift the stay-at-home orders!
For a long time I thought HN had higher quality discussion than Reddit, but in reality it's just the same BS with slightly larger words.
I think people are hoping for a third option: driving the infection rate low enough that it can be contained going forward with testing and contact tracing. Whether it’s realistic to think that can be achieved in an acceptable timeframe, I don’t know.
My understanding is the end game for that is still a vaccine or herd immunity. It just slows the process down enough that you don’t have more people dying because of a lack of equipment.
So then trying to drive the infection rate too low before reopening could actually be counterproductive because it also slows down the building of herd immunity?
> Deaths is not a metric that can determine which stage of this pandemic we are in. Immunity is the figure you're looking for, which will not increase under a shelter-in-place order. Deaths are down, but will immediately shoot back up if the shelter-in-place is lifted.
Absolutely not. If you believe enough information is known about herd-immunity in relation to Corona, you are dangerously misinformed.
Please don't play the "I thought you people were smarter" card if you're being downvoted for spreading misinformation.
Number of deaths DO matter in relation to:
1. Human suffering (perhaps the most important metric)
2. Learning how we prevent further deaths (calculating hospital and materials dissemination needs)
I'm spreading misinformation by saying deaths per week won't tell us what stage of the pandemic we're in?
> Number of deaths DO matter in relation to: 1. Human suffering (perhaps the most important metric) 2. Learning how we prevent further deaths (calculating hospital and materials dissemination needs)
Did I ever suggest otherwise? Literally all I said about "number of deaths" was that it does not tell us how close we are to the pandemic being over. You just brought up a bunch of other stuff to feel good about yourself.
I really did think you people were smarter though. Apparently you haven't even learned how to read something before you reply to it.
> If you believe enough information is known about herd-immunity in relation to Corona, you are dangerously misinformed.
Again, I never said anything about this. Please learn how to read. I'm not claiming to know how we reach the level of "herd immunity" we need to get out of this. I just said "herd immunity" or a vaccine would be the solution here. Am I wrong about that? Jesus fucking christ, the only thing HN does better than Reddit is self-righteousness and smug asshats.
People not getting COVID-19 immunity after recovery seems an extraordinary claim that would require very strong evidence for me to take seriously.
How do you believe people recover from COVID-19?
The fact that you recover from it at all, and generate measurable antibodies in the process, and that humans generally gain some level of immunity to all the other coronaviruses we're plagued by weights my belief strongly towards at least short term immunity being very likely.
I downvoted because I'm not currently aware of a current usable metric for immunity and because you didn't link to one. It's obvious to me too that the pandemic isn't over but deaths is (to my knowledge) the best proxy for all the other metrics that we currently have, due to lack of consistent testing.
I tend to agree.. It's not on employers to support their employees - it's on governments to support their citizens.
Amazon will get lambasted in the press, but this isn't an issue to be fixed employer by employer but rather by the government, which needs to provide safety nets like universal healthcare or living wage
In other countries employers have a duty of care towards their employees, they just can't use them up until they aren't good any longer. I note there are continuous reports about dozens of people falling sick with coronavirus at Amazon warehouses, and in the past there reports of were ambulances parked outside Amazon facilities because it's cheaper to cart someone off to the hospital with heatstroke than to provide proper air conditioning.
What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all?
There are multiple active outbreaks in crowded factories and other facilities, just like an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. They do not have necessary safety equipment and procedures in place yet. Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. They could fix it, though.
A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that everyone has been tested before returning to work, along with ensuring everyone has masks and gloves and enough time to thoroughly wash their hands throughout their shift. Press reports up until this point and complaints from employees suggest none of that is consistently the case.
> Millions of masks have been distributed across our network. They are available to all Amazon associates, delivery service partners, Amazon Flex participants, seasonal employees, and Whole Foods Market stores employees. We are encouraging everyone to take and use them.
As for testing, they have been unable to do it through regular channels so they are building a lab to do it themselves:
> An important safety step might be regular testing of all employees for COVID-19, including those without symptoms. We have begun assembling equipment we need to build our first lab to process tests and hope to start testing small numbers of our frontline employees soon.
As for cleanliness:
> We have increased the frequency and intensity of cleaning at all sites, including regular sanitization of door handles, handrails, touch screens, scanners, and other frequently touched areas.
> Our enhanced cleaning has added almost 200 additional points of contact per site across our janitorial teams, and we’ve increased the size of our cleaning teams threefold to support our buildings.
> We require everyone to wash their hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after using the bathroom and before eating, as well as after blowing their nose, coughing, or sneezing. If soap and water are not readily available, alcohol-based hand sanitizer stations are easily accessible throughout our buildings.
> In addition to break times, employees can log out of their system to wash their hands whenever they choose, without worrying about impact on their performance goals.
Amazon has by now spent millions of man-hours on addressing COVID-19 -- meetings, designing splash banners, etc. They are a very big company who pays big money for top talent. Amazon is not the scrappy upstart it was 15 years ago. Let's hold them accountable according to what they are capable.
Edit: it would seem obvious in retrospect that if most major governments have action plans in case of global pandemic, a global logistics company should have done the same. I would be very surprised if they hadn't, frankly, and my view of Bezos would be lower than it already is if they hadn't because this is really something that should have mattered to him before it was a real situation.
Frankly, I'm quite surprised Amazon, FedEx, UPS and USPS have done as well as they have under these conditions.
Yes, you can plan to some extent... but these are PEOPLE heavy issues. The only way this would have gone without issue is if it was pretty much ONLY robots, and had 3-4x the number of people needed, skilled and trained to support those robots, and that the robots themselves were under 25% utilization to begin with.
Telling a company they need to spend 4-5X as much for operations, just in case of a once a centuray global pandemic, is pretty unlikely.
Now, if you want to talk about getting domestic sourcing of more products, particularly in infrastructure, defense, medicine and communications/tech, I'm all ears. There's no reason more than half of medicine and telecom/tech equipment should be foreign sourced for a country the size/scale of the US as a matter of defense. With where we're at with China and Iran (effects on Taiwan of particular concern), it's even more amazing there aren't more talks about this.
I'm so tired of this holier-than-thou "they should know better/be better prepared" bullshit. Once-in-a-century black swan event - yeah, every company should definitely have plans for something like this!
Moving massive resources in an effort like this is no small feat, and trying to treat it like it's as simple as signing people up to Slack is silly. It's amazing how people think operations like just magically manifest "because".
Even companies with “pandemic” plans have a kind of outline of cascading triggers but a lot of the resulting triggers are undefined and those are things which basically say ($leadership) convenes talks things over and develop emergent plans and offer to their lower managers who take that and develop their own plans accordingly. And then that has to be revised with feedback from staff , etc...
I've had some opportunity to have insight into corporate pandemic planning over the years.
It's important to understand that U.S. corporate planning for a pandemic has assumed a certain level of urgency and competency from the federal response.
This has been reasonable, as the federal government has for the last 20 years, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, taken potential pandemics very seriously, and responded aggressively to them.
The federal response to the 2019 novel coronavirus has completely failed to live up to these expectations and the result is that everyone is scrambling to catch up. Corporations and states are following their playbooks... but those playbooks were not written in terms of "let's be ready to fill in for the federal government when they fall on their faces." The whole point of the federal government is to be a backstop for everyone else in the face of huge national threats.
This is one reason you're seeing Republican lawmakers be so willing to pump money out of the government: they know the government screwed up the early response, and so it is fair that the government should pay to help mitigate that.
Most major Governments have an ability to print money on will, and yet they were caught red handed in handling covid19. Not to mention that the entire mandate of government is to keep their country safe as first thing, and yet their incompetence was on fully display. I for one, am glad that private companies didn't copy the government.
As someone reading through this thread, I have some feedback for you. This is partly to test the commonly held view that feedback is desired instead of blindly voting and partly to help you. I piped it through `base64` so that you can ignore it if you don't feel like it:
Thanks. I read it. I'm curious where is the mental block that prevents people from seeing the point I'm trying to make. Am I brow-beating around the bush too much, neither clearly nor concisely?
I'm not convinced, as it creates the possibility of egregious violations of community standards being difficult for moderators to detect.
Less of an issue, but still worth some thought: Just like paywalled submissions must be by-passable so that we can all share in a conversation equally, base64 threatens to create subthreads that are not equally accessible. (Trivial easy if you are on a laptop, not on mobile).
That's a fair point. Acting in good faith I had not considered abuse of the technique.
I've often wondered what a forum would look like where you could make the equivalent of 'aside' comments. The way someone might, while you're speaking, say softly "hyPERbolee, not HYper-bowl" to correct you without interrupting.
Perhaps a good example is StackOverflow's Q&A format w/ comments and chats. You can comment and move to chats but the emphasis is on the important part: the question and the answers.
Allowing voting on these "asides" in StackOverflow permits all of the usual stuff while relegating them to the asides they are.
Of course, in the case of what I used it for, it is generally impolite to offer advice unasked but the nature of slow feedback loops means it's better for me to offer an ignorable piece of thing. i.e. if you think I'm an idiot, I want you to have the power to ignore me. That is only polite to compensate for the brain-hacking strength of having text describe you. You can't ignore it afterwards.
>I've often wondered what a forum would look like where you could make the equivalent of 'aside' comments. The way someone might, while you're speaking, say softly "hyPERbolee, not HYper-bowl" to correct you without interrupting.
That would either be PMs, or the forum equivalent of posting "sage" on an imageboard (which prevents the post from bumping,) neither of which HN supports.
Although given the forum's focus on quality over quantity, I think some kind of "whisper" mode might be worth looking at, to opt out of having such comments from appear on the new comments page.
Yeah, I considered PMs but they're really not the same because the point is that everyone benefits with low attention contribution. The whisper mode is totally what I was thinking of.
They could be comments that are automatically marked dead for everyone but the intended recipient. People with showdead on already self-select for higher noise content anyway.
Those aren't facts, those are PR slogans from a blog post on Amazon's web site. I am not holding my breath to see whether these policies are enacted in good faith, given Amazon's business practices and labor relations of late.
I'm being specific about the framing and the narrative that is constructed when well-meaning users parrot corporate talking points in an organic setting like a public Internet forum.
This article mentions 300 people, which isn't a very big fraction of Amazon employees. I'm sure some employees who aren't participating sympathize, but what number would convince you that the "vast majority" think it's fine?
>Not having enough money to survive isn't a made up thing.
No one has suggested that anything here is a 'made up thing', are you creating strawmen?
>However you want to define it, people need to make ends meet including right now.
I'm interested in understanding what the GP's point was. I don't get to definitely choose arbitrary definitions and interpretations for them. The dictionary and accepted usage offers a range of interpretations.
Apologies.. your comment sure read a lot like 'if starve really means eat less, maybe they should just suck it up and eat less.' I though it was obvious that GP's usage of the word 'starve' wasn't to be taken literally.
In what way am I in the wrong? I did not claim and do not believe that there is only one level of 'forced'. No one here is making it out to be that way.
Edit: Just because there is a range of accepted meanings for the word 'forced' doesn't mean that all uses of the word 'forced' are correct. Even with the most low key interpretations of the word 'forced', I don't think that this is in any way the correct word for this situation.
> What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all?
Amazon is about as close to the ideal of an "essential employer" as anyone is, though. They're shipping a huge amount of food and other essentials. Objectively, a package delivered through a managed professional environment is less risky and involves fewer potential transmission events than one purchased at retail.
Online sellers, where they have product to deliver, are the ones we want to prioritize keeping open.
Now... there's lots to complain about with Amazon's response in other ways. It's very reasonable to argue that their workers need more PPE, employer-provided testing and notification, hazard pay, better safety practices, etc...
But if you want to argue that Amazon should shut down... who do you want to be open instead?
I'm glad I waited an extra minute to comment b/c you did all the work. Amazon has allowed me to limit my local travels to two physical environments for essentially the past six weeks. There's a value to that in reducing transmission.
> By requiring others to do that for you and paying them pennies for what value they're providing.
The median wage of an Amazon Warehouse worker is about $60,000 / year, which is above the median wage in the US[1]. The 25th-percentile wage for the same worker is $53,000 — still higher than the median wage, and this is an entry level position that requires no college eduction.
Amazon also provides 401(k) matching for their warehouse workers and provides them the same group health insurance as their software engineers and executives[2][3]. It is quite possibly the most generous set of benefits currently available to an entry-level low-skill worker with no college education.
> I'd agree with you if the company decided to not take profit during this time and paid the employees the same amount of value they produce.
Couple things: 1) I think you're overestimating how much profit Amazon makes on its retail business; the margins are razor thin. 2) profit is just the cost of labor for the managers, I.e. the people that are coordinating the labor and calling the high-level shots. This includes coming up with the policies and systems to ensure the company can continue to operate in the midst of a global pandemic.
Finally, Amazon employed 798,000 people as of 2019, and added 100,000 new jobs in the last month alone, with 50,000 current openings outstanding. A lot of the margin goes into literally providing all of these wages and benefits for nearly 1 million people. This is more than many industrialized nations.
The first number is so laughably far away from reality. Do you have any idea how many hours a week you would have to work to make $60k at $15/hr? Does the average warehouse worker make double the starting rate or work 70 hour weeks?
As someone who works in the industry I do agree however that they do an okay job taking care of their people compared to others. But nobody is going to write an article about how shit it is to work at a warehouse owned by a company no one has ever heard of. Amazon has actually done a lot for people at those places too though, if there is an amazon warehouse nearby starting at $15 an hour nobody is going to come work for you for barely above minimum wage anymore, it has definitely put some out competitive wage pressure.
The Paysa number is probably correct... For the tiny minority of workers in Amazon Warehouses who are salaried. If we look at actual wages (not just salaried employees) it would be far lower.
Terribly naive to include that point in the argument.
Like I said, they can fix the problem. It sounds like they're trying, but it's not proven that they've gotten all the way. In the past they were clearly inadequate and it's why employees went on strike and publicly protested.
"Essential employees" shouldn't be put at risk just because people need them to ship stuff out. We shouldn't put "essential employees"' immune-compromised relatives at risk either.
> "Essential employees" shouldn't be put at risk just because people need them to ship stuff out.
But... isn't that what "essential" means? No one claims this is fair. It's not fair that as software developers we get an automatic pass to continue our careers working from home while our bartender friends have to file for unemployment either.
But at the end of the day we need stuff to live. Someone needs to run the power and intenet and water infrastructure. And someone needs to deliver goods to people who need them.
I mean: I agree we need to make this better for those folks. I just don't see how Amazon demanding essential workers come to work is the wrong thing here.
I don't know about that, but there'd definitely be newspaper headlines about the number of workers testing positive implying that it's somehow Amazon's fault. We've already seen this with one of Amazon's NYC warehouses (over numbers that seem very much in line with NYC in general), various food manufacturers, etc. Apparently some meat-packing companies are now reluctant to test any of their workers because of the bad publicity and the damage it does - they'd rather just close down the entire site.
COVID tests aren't DNA tests. It's a swab of the back of your throat (through the nose, oof) to test for a specific virus. It's not hard to find the specific stuff used to perform the tests, it's out there on the internet, the CDC published it. Are we really descending into paranoia about Amazon trying to genetically profile employees?
There's a big population of people who just start from the premise that Amazon must be doing something wrong and search for facts to justify it. I lost my ability to assume good faith when people complained they should pay $15 an hour, they started paying $15 an hour, and then the controversy immediately restarted about how greedy they are to not pay more.
I'm pretty sure they could start paying a minimum wage of $30 an hour and people would be irate that they're making it impossible to hire anyone because Amazon is overpaying. When you're the biggest player there is nowhere to hide.
This probably won't be too far off, if the current level of unemployment benefits holds. Just the $600 a week on top of state benefits comes out to $15/hr.
Never mind the fact that Amazon does 401(k) matching and provides its warehouse workers the same group health insurance plan as their software engineers, which might possibly be the most generous health insurance plan for an entry-level position that requires no college degree.
I'm right there with you... I don't like Trump, even if I agree on a lot of policy actions/choices, but the guy can't have a good day with a lot of people. So many are outright lying to push an agenda over truth, and you can't really rely on anyone to be informed anymore.
Right now, I'm much more concerned that we're on the brink of war with China and Iran... partly because China sees us as weakened over COVID, I'm not sure on Iran's motivations right now either... With how much of our tech comes from taiwan, it's really concerning... this could literally set the world back a decade for a decade.
Correct, because SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and contains no DNA. But the test does work by detecting the viral RNA and it is hard to find the specific stuff (reagents) to perform the test and that's a big reason why we're all sheltering in place without a proper nationwide testing regime.
They are not forcing them since they are allowed to take time off. You can't self quarantine forever anyways, standard procedure is 14 days of quarantine if you think you may have been exposed to the virus or if you have any symptoms.
Unpaid time off. How are people supposed to eat and pay rent if their only available leave is unpaid? How will they afford their hospital bills after being exposed?
I'm not sure why that makes it okay to add to that population? Amazon has the resources to temporarily cover paid leave until they can guarantee safe conditions in their warehouses for employees. Regions that have prematurely relaxed their virus controls have seen new outbreaks, the same could happen in warehouses. It's in everyone's best interest for Amazon to offer paid leave until their workplaces have been proven to be safe, which is going to take a bit even after all the appropriate measures are in place.
The safety net is by far the better way to address this, it's a drop in the bucket relative to the total cost of the safety net.
> It's in everyone's best interest for Amazon to offer paid leave until their workplaces have been proven to be safe, which is going to take a bit even after all the appropriate measures are in place.
Amazon appears to think that your "until" condition is here now, per the safety measures they purport to be taking.
Yeah, I don’t see how few extra bucks is worth literally risking life. Total numbers look big but really it’s $120 more per each shift where you can be exposed or expose others to a deadly virus.
>What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all?
There is no vaccine coming for a year, maybe two, maybe never. "Flattening the curve" is ONLY a delaying strategy to not swamp the health-care system and hope that some treatments are developed (no guarantees there either). COVID is going to be part of our lives.
Are you saying we should shelter in place forever?
>A starting point would be Amazon providing tests
What tests? Are you expecting every employer to test their workers every day?
>along with ensuring everyone has masks and gloves and enough time to thoroughly wash their hands throughout their shift.
That's reasonable. Masks + social distancing + gloves, and policies for hand washing and disinfecting of commonly used surfaces. I suspect Amazon isn't too far from that, and if they are it's only because of the global PPE shortage.
IMO a starting point is: Single test for all employees before return to work, 100% guarantee that everyone has a mask for their shifts, the facility has ventilation, and they have gloves. 100% guarantee that facilities have soap and running water.
In the past all of what I mention has been a problem in warehouses, and it's why employees are protesting. Amazon can fix this, but it's been a problem very recently.
It's super reasonable if they can't gather up a bunch of N95s and medical grade gloves, but paper surgical masks or cloth masks should be feasible by now. It sounds like they're working on their own testing infrastructure, which is great.
There’s no greater demonstration of their internal class divide than what would happen if they asked HQ employees to stop working from home and do the same.
The point is that the way the system is currently set up, it sustains itself by using poor and working class bodies as consumable parts which are replaced when they inevitably crack under the pressure. Yes if you get a good education and get a desk job you can work from home. That's obvious. What is less obvious is who, on average, has the means and access to get to that position.
Hey, I am German. Assembly line worker generally earn similar to university graduates.
It does not matter whether you are employed or not: your kids will get the same quality of schooling (almost no private schools), you get the same healthcare treatment everybody else gets, your kids will go to university for free - if they can’t afford living expenses the government will give them a free loan for that, you get 6 weeks of vacation and unlimited sick days.
THIS has nothing to do with Amazon, BMW, Google, Facebook or the holy church.
There is a divide - bit it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems.
Amazon routinely involves themselves in social/political systems to exploit the circumstances to their benefit. See: their involvement in Seattle politics vs Kshama Sawant; the recent bidding war between cities for Amazon's HQ2 and all the tax benefits that were laid at their feet; the routine union-busting efforts including literally forcing some workers to attend an online course about why unions are bad... the list goes on. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and the holy church all have immense influence in American politics through the lobbyists and frothing evangelical base.
So yes, this is about corporations, and specifically corporatists aiding and abetting the private takeover of public life as we know it.
The Catholic Church in Germany had it written into LAW that they can deny its employees to unionize or strike and they can discriminate them (e.g., fire them) for their personal and religious beliefs. Oh, and did I mention that thousands of cases of sexual abuse went unpunished because the German Catholic Church made sure that they would not be prosecuted?
So, give me a break with for-profit company morale - or put differently: what is YOUR baseline to compare these actions against?
I actually never used the term "for-profit" to describe the issues, for good reason. Money is useful only insofar as it helps you gain and maintain power -- it is power and the ability to influence reality to your benefit that is the fundamental quantity being optimized in this system. Framing the power grab as fundamentally about power (is obvious, and) makes it apparent that the Catholic church in your example wanted to maintain a public reputation positive enough to continue to earn donations and devoted followers, which is why they made sure to avoid prosecution since that's usually a huge hit to one's public reputation. So your comment about "The Catholic Church in Germany had it written into LAW" aligns with my point perfectly because again they are wielding influence to improve their circumstances, independent of considerations of the consequences for others.
So to get to your question: I am not being comparative here. I am attempting to study the fundamental drives that sustain and grow corporations. I am interested in contrasting what are generally considered "human rights" (in both positive and negative senses[1]) with what ends up being encouraged and perpetuated by the actions of those corporations as singular entities. My baseline to compare the actions of corporations is versus what I would imagine a compassionate superintelligence might do. Obviously this is biased toward my own ethics/morals but I think that's ok because I generally try to reduce suffering and make things more equitable.
My baseline is basically 1) what is "affordable" for the actors which are wielding their power vs the benefits for the people whom are subject to the consequences of the decisions of those actors, and 2) what those actors actually do with the money and power at their disposal vs what they could have done to improve the material conditions of a large number of people.
Using precedent as a baseline seems stupid to me... only consider the fact that the tradition of "law" is quite young and has been continuously shaped by those in power since its inception, and so shall not be a basis for moral or ethical understanding.
(And for context: the Catholic Church is the biggest employer in Germany - I am not talking about priests and nuns, but all the organisations and companies they run here)
> it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems
What's the difference, exactly? the social/political systems create the group of under-paid, under-served people. Call them working class or not, the problem is still there.
In the US, employers pay drastically less for physical labor than knowledge work, government does not offer a social safety net, and social services are offered almost exclusively as paid services. People get trapped in a multi-generational cycle of lower wages, which means less desirable housing, worse schools, worse health care, which means their children have less opportunity for better-paying jobs. This creates, effectively, a low-wage-jobs-only group of people.
Like you can actually vote? Like there are more than two parties with the same take on social security? So you are telling me that the system in the US is like how the majority of people want it or that people have no say in the system?
The US did have many candidates with different takes on social security, just that people didn't vote for them. One of those candidates even raised more money than the winner. Now you can say people are brain washed. But people didn't vote for alternative takes on social security in US, or else they could have voted otherwise.
Because, counterfactually, no Jeff Bezos means no Amazon means no abuse of Amazon employees. So, to some extent, Bezos and Amazon are responsible, even if they aren't wholly responsible.
As I mentioned in another comment: I think you get cause and effect wrong - and that is imho a big issue and makes the entire discussion really annoying.
The destruction of the social safety net in the US allows companies to act differently in the US than in other countries.
So: Amazon pays above minimum wage, gives more leave to its employees than legally required, has stricter safety standards than legally required (didn’t a president just ask in a press conference recently whether drinking bleach couldn’t cure Corona? Where was that again - rural South America?) - and still they are the evil ones.
In Europe, any Amazon warehouse worker’s has full medical health coverage (including his family), his kids go to university for free, get the same schooling as the kids of a CEO, probably has 5-6 weeks vacation and if he quits his job - all of that will still hold. So per your logic, we should praise Amazon for all of that. But that would be equally illogical - because Amazon is not the root cause for all these benefits.
No Jeff Bezos means: well, no shipments in times of dire need, no cloud compute, no 75+k jobs during the biggest “job recession” in American history. Also means no Blue Origin and no Washington Post.
What I find interesting: You guys seem so paranoid and jealous about giving any benefit you have earned yourself so hard (e.g. health insurance) to anybody that appears to achieve less than you do that you collectively fight any improvement to the system. You DO NOT want all the benefits of a social safety net for everybody - hence nobody gets anything. Don’t blame this on Bezos, but blame it on yourself.
Careful with your "you guys". I'm a leftist, and I advocate for health care as a human right.
In the USA, labor rights were earned by literally committing armed rebellion against corporate "company towns" [0], as in the West Virginia coal wars [1]. Without this, the USA would not have weekends or eight-hour workdays.
Even if Amazon did not exist, Facebook would still need a lot of computers and Google would still have a lot of spare compute, so public clouds might still happen. And if they didn't, well, maybe that's not a bad thing! It's not clear that public clouds are good.
The Washington Post is older than Bezos; it turns 143 this year [2]. Without Bezos, perhaps the paper would be dead right now, but perhaps it would be thriving, since the paywall on their online content was only built after Bezos took over.
I find your view "not even wrong" [4]; your history of the issue is so shallow that I can't even critique it without first establishing the historical context.
Why don’t you have free health care, free education and that stuff? Are you honestly citing a 100 year old riot as a proof the American people want it? Obviously they 1) don’t or 2) want it but can’t have it.
I mean, at least we have established that it’s not Amazon but “the system and everybody else” is the problem.
oh I'm certainly not saying that the system in the US is good by any means, what I'm saying is that it currently is the way I describe it.
People (normal people, anyway) generally have a lot less say in that system than you seem to think. I don't get to vote on whether or not a major employer offers better pay for physical labor. I don't get to vote on whether or not for-profit schools exist. I don't get to vote on whether or not employers will (consciously or not) discriminate against job applicants who look poor or don't speak eloquently as a result of low-quality education.
Hell, I don't even, really, get to write to my congressperson and tell them they should propose a law that would achieve any of that, because I don't have the money and connections to shepherd that bill through congress (i.e., pay bribes).
Voting for candidates who will work for change is important, but it's not magic, and it's also not something that people who care about this weren't already doing every time we get the chance.
> I don't get to vote on whether or not a major employer offers better pay for physical labor.
Found a company, and pay more for physical labor. Not only will that directly cause it, you will influence the market. Only buy products from companies that pay what you believe are fair wages, if you're unwilling to found a company yourself.
> I don't get to vote on whether or not for-profit schools exist.
No, but you can found a non-profit school, or donate to them (I do!).
> I don't get to vote on whether or not employers will (consciously or not) discriminate against job applicants who look poor or don't speak eloquently as a result of low-quality education.
Again, you can hire whoever you want (within legal confines) at your own company.
You are not helpless. What you aren't able to do in the US is just force other people to do what you want. Put in the work, create something and show that the approach you believe in is viable, or even superior. Be the change you want to see.
I am a bit shocked that all those people downvoting me apparently do not understand a simple fact: democracies give the power to decide over the distribution of wealth and the justification for “taking a fair share” to the majority; that’s how votes work; democracies justify taking 80% of tax from 20% of population by popular opinion that “high incomes should pay greater shares because it is fair”; so how exactly does your exploitation Marx stuff work at scale - unless your system is corrupted and non-democratic; but why do you blame THAT on a single company?
I agree with your assessment of the nature and consequences of a well-functioning democracy. I think it self evident that ours (USA) is not working especially well, particular with regard to resisting corruption. On the other hand, I'm not sure anyone has blamed this on a single company?
Also, you may be interested in this bit from the site guidelines:
>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
No. The commentors purposefully reverse the causal relationship present here. The short comings in the political and social system CAUSE the stuff that you feel so strongly about. Amazon has been around for 25 years. They may have benefitted from the destruction of any social safety net - but they are not the reason for the current situation. In fact, they are paying above minimal wage, in fact they were offering paid leaves before other companies did.
I get you hate them and take any opportunity for bashing. But that doesn’t mean that cause and effect relationships should be arbitrarily reversed, should it?
You mean like the data center employees who all do have to continue to work from their offices? Those employees who I haven't seen a single complaint from, or any articles written about?
Someone absolutely should write about their circumstances relative to other employees. I doubt they’re without complaints.
Also, it should go without saying, that one section of corporate employees being in more danger than their peers doesn’t disprove the broader reality and divide between warehouse and HQ workers.
The "class divide" rhetoric re:amazon doesn't go anywhere good, imo. The corporate lesson being learned here is "be like uber," don't ever do mass unemployment directly. Is the goal to "ban" the tech industry from having working class jobs?
I do, btw, happen to agree that amazon warehouse employees should organise. Considering Amazon's massive profitability, there's room to do better.
Nothing would happen, except for the fact that it would be a bad public health policy. If HQ employees had to be at the office, then they would be at the office. What, you think an office worker wouldn't come to work if they had to?
Rapid surges in hiring are often accompanied by harder negotiation stances in pay and condtions since new hires have not had time to socialise or organise and hence unionise.
Bezos is notoriously opposed to organised labour. I think this surge implies a fight, and a long one.
Once you have an established contract and term of employment, organising for better working conditions is the next step. Or perhaps your preference is a perpetual marginalised and casual workforce?
Are you eligible for unemployment on such a leave?
Also, I don't fault Amazon for limiting paid-leave if the worker isn't sick, but it's only reasonable to ask people to come in if they are given decent PPE. Temperature checks are insufficient for a virus that may have a large # of asymptomatic carriers and a lengthy pre-symptomatic period for many that get sick.
You can go tour one. The robotics are pretty impressive.
It reminded me of the scenes in Beauty and the Beast where the teapots and brooms and candlesticks were all orchestrated together to clean up/set the table/etc.
Obviously you wouldn't quit your job if it pays a lot higher than the new unemployment payouts, and/or if you can easily work from home...and nobody but you is claiming that it's a character flaw to choose not to risk your life working if you have the safety net to avoid doing so.
This is a really bizarre, immature reaction to a discussion of the incentives trade-off at play here.
I'm not addressing the extremely wise decision that a government make it financially possible for people not to spread disease. Nor disputing that the vast majority of people are willing to do this under these extreme circumstance.
I'm addressing the assumption, wrapped in theories about incentives, that everyone (strangely except any persons expounding the theory) is eager to quit work for "welfare" at the first opportunity. And, by extension, that this is why there must never be a social safety net that can keep anyone alive. Because, according to this demonstrably false theory, society would collapse.
People do not quit their jobs to receive handouts exactly because of their principles and because they are not the cynical robots that theoreticians make them out to be. Corporations may maximize wealth regardless of harm to society or others but the vast majority of natural persons don't.
> I'm addressing the assumption, wrapped in theories about incentives, that everyone (strangely except any persons expounding the theory) is eager to quit work for "welfare" at the first opportunity
Again, the GP comment didn't say or imply anything like this. You're just accusing random commenters of irrelevant thoughtcrime based on trying to fit into every square peg into the round hole of the same vacuous political gamesmanship that dominates most conversations that touch on the economy. Paying attention to incentives doesn't at all imply that you think it's a moral failing for someone to follow incentives. In fact, I'd imagine that it's quite the opposite: people who get hysterical at the sight of rational, apolitical discussion are infinitely more likely to weight descriptions of incentives with moral dimensions that they don't have or need.
This is what it looks like when people are actually interested in trying to understand the economic situation, without immediately having to snap into us-vs-them political gamesmanship. HN isn't perfect, but it's at least better than that; Go to /r/politics or something if that's what you're interested in.
If the top comment is a genuine question with neutral tone then so is the similarly phrased "When will Republicans start mass arrests of journalist?" I don't explicitly state a value judgement and I can follow up with "you can't blame them for acting in their self interest". Yet claiming it is a neutral question would obviously be mistaken.
Likewise the claim that "following incentives is excusable" includes, among other hidden assumptions, that it is actually happening and that there is actually an incentive. It is obfuscation in both cases. It certainly does not make the question an economic one.
I don't see anything above accusing anyone of thoughtcrime. I assume this is a shibboleth used to dismiss political opponents, end conversation and instruct fellow travelers what opinion to have on the mater. At any rate, I'd be more concerned about thought police from a leader who purges anyone who disagrees with him[1] than a random internet voice.
Took a month to get my debit card from the state and they sent it to the wrong building. They aren’t taking calls or emails. Luckily the incorrect recipient walked it over to my apartment otherwise I would be completely out of luck. The system is at the breaking point and not reliable.
> The company has said criticisms of its safety measures are unfounded.
Well, the French justice forced them to improve their safety measures. They had to close down for 5 days to do so. I don't remember reading about them doing that worldwide. However, I do remember them complaining in emails sent to their French customers that they are forced to improve the safety measures and that the French justice is not nice. It was a bit ridiculous and not well received.
They shut down because they needed to figure out what was meant by the "essential" order. The fine was too large to do anything but pause operations.
> On April 15, the online store preferred to close its six large French warehouses, ensuring that it had no other choice, given the amount of the penalty. "How to precisely define food, hygiene or medical products?" " Asked the business.
This is going to be like the 9/11 first responders where they had to beg for health care and health insurance for the rest of their lives.
We have no idea what the lifetime implications are for someone getting sick. Put lifetime healthcare coverage with no cap in their contract. What are they going to somehow be "too healthy" ?
> These extensions increase our total investment in pay during COVID-19 to nearly $700 million for our hourly employees and partners.
This is a drop in the bucket for Amazon. They are able to pay much better but do not. If the savings were being passed onto the customers, that's one thing, but with all the recent news about Amazon's practices, it's easy and convenient to take the cynical route.
Not talking about it in absolute terms. How about talking about it in terms of median wage per job title? Putting big numbers in glitzy blog posts only serves to dazzle and obfuscates how easy it would be for Amazon to double or triple that number with basically no dent in the wallet from doing so.
You think Amazon could spend an extra $700 million to $1.4 billion with "basically no dent in the wallet"? I guess I understand why you're frustrated if you think that's the case, but it's just not true.
Jeff Bezos owns 55.55M shares of Amazon stock (https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1043298.htm). Since just April 1st, the value of that stock has increased by ~55.55M*($2400 - $1900) = $27.775B. I know net_worth != cash, but he can and routinely does (see link above) liquidate stock to fund other projects.
In this context, I think $700M is equivalent to a coin tossed in a fountain.
That's fair. This cashflow is obviously not available to Amazon directly, but I could see an argument that Jeff Bezos specifically ought to make more funds available. (Maybe he will - if you believe the headlines he was entirely hands-off the retail business until recently.)
And this is not an annualized number, they started the pay increase last month. This is a huge figure, especially for a their razor thin margin retail business.
If you had an intended figure in terms of the median wage by employee class at AMZN, we could pretty easily get a good guess for that in terms of dollars and cents by looking at Glassdoor or Payscale. Conversely, you could provide the sort of median wage ratio you were thinking of, such that you'd be satisfied with Amazon's response; and we could compare them the other way around.
If you find the wording of GGP's question incorrect, can I ask what compensation level you would have preferred Amazon provide, either in absolute terms OR relative to some other measure?
I didn't know what you meant. I thought you meant what you said. I'm grateful that the parent gave you a chance to clarify, and don't see this as a "derailment". Surely you aren't impugning their motive?
That’s what I have to pay as a small employer to keep people for basic assembly and packaging during this. That’s what I felt was fair, since that’s what unemployment pays in my state. I figured I have to at least match that, so I did. I had to let a few people go and scale back, but helped them all navigate the UI claim’s process. Paid out their PTO balance to hold them over. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night asking people to come to work for less knowing it would endanger them and pay them less than literally being unemployed and staying at home. I will bring them all back as soon as I can. I let them all keep their health insurance for the time being, which I pay for 100%.
If a small 10 person shop can do it, so can Amazon.
The idea that anyone, anywhere in the US, is making less than $20/hr during this is morally repugnant to me.
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/how-amazon-priorit...
> We’ve extended the increased hourly pay outlined below through May 16. We are also extending double overtime pay in the U.S. and Canada. These extensions increase our total investment in pay during COVID-19 to nearly $700 million for our hourly employees and partners. In addition, we are providing flexibility with leave of absence options, including expanding the policy to cover COVID-19 circumstances, such as high-risk individuals or school closures. We continue to see heavy demand during this difficult time and the team is doing incredible work for our customers and the community.